Atone for Me
by tanaka-kun
Summary: Hinata awakens in an unfamiliar room. He remembers nothing of how he got there, or why. A cold voice calls out to him, and the shocking realisation of what is about to ensue hits him hard and fast. (Originally wrote this for an English assignment. It's a crossover of Haikyuu x Higurashi.)


"You must atone for your sins, Hinata Shoyo," a voice called out from the darkness. The familiarity of the cold, empty voice sent a shiver down his spine; he could recognise that voice anywhere, and desperately didn't want to admit it. The sarcastic undertone, the way his voice would deepen when he concentrated, the darkness he had yet to even realise; Hinata was accustomed to it all. He was not accustomed, however, to being divested of freedom and vision, and being entirely unaware of where he was.

He tried to speak, but the thick, surprisingly hygienic cloth in his mouth prevented him from doing so. His hands were tied down tightly, strapped onto the chair's armrests. From what he could tell, the bindings on his hands were not a form of cloth, like the gag between his teeth: it felt leathery. A belt, perhaps. A thin layer of syrupy grime lay dormant on the seat of the wooden, mouldy chair, seeping through his jeans and onto his legs. His shoes stuck to the ground with every slight movement.

The room suddenly filled with a dim, yellow light, illuminating his dilapidated surroundings. A petite tray sat motionless on an iron cart, directly beside his battered, rickety chair. The panelled walls were smeared with a thick, black, mysterious substance. A foul, deathly stench lingered over the room and clawed at his throat, burning his tonsils. As soon as he saw the sharp tools and handsaws hung up on the inconspicuous, worn down hooks, he knew that his fate was sealed.

A man he'd known since childhood, his best friend since birth, stood in front of him. He knew that face anywhere. Constantly furrowed brows lain neatly above a pair of piercing, invasive eyes, outlined by his perfectly straight, jet black hair. A tall, kingly posture, as if he always felt superior, that would make any girl swoon. He had it all. So why did he look so irritable and gloomy, yet so solitary and regretful?

Some form of hideous contraption was gripped tightly in his hand, partnered with a psychotic scowl on his face. There were musty, brown splatters around the edges of the device, darkened with age. Hinata wished he could tell what it was, but in the dim light, and with his awful eyesight, it was an impossible task.

"I'm sorry that it had to turn out this way, Hinata. I really am. We refused to expiate, and now we both have to do this the hard way," he sighed. He ran his hand through his smooth, ebony hair, briefly glancing away from Hinata. His expression showed various multitudes of murderous lust, sequestered by an innocent malice.

The boredom in his Prussian blue eyes: that's what hurt the most. The blatant disregard of any emotion, friendship, or love that had ever existed between them. The emptiness of his once vibrant, energised eyes; was he already familiar with this room? Or did he simply not care? His vacant expression struck daggers into Hinata's heart. Why did he look so indifferent, so phlegmatic? Was this some insane prank he'd concocted, or a legitimate threat to his life?

"I suppose I should probably remove that gag. I initially put it on to make sure you didn't scream when you woke up, not to completely silence you. Chloroform only goes so far, Hinata," he chuckled, seemingly amused by his sadistic humour. He reached around the back of Hinata's head and untied the cloth, tossing it aside.

"Kageyama! Where the hell are we? What's going on?" Hinata demanded, straining his arms as he pushed himself forward. The bindings on his arms were far more constrictive than he initially thought: they dug into his wrists like steel handcuffs, splitting the fragile skin and spilling a minor amount of blood. Kageyama's imperturbable expression contorted into a grimace.

"Hinata, I told you as soon as you woke up. Atonement," he said, slamming the manually operated device onto the small table beside Hinata. The immobilised red head could finally see that the 'device' was a simple pair of pliers.

"What's that for?" Hinata challenged. He knew that he was not in any position to be interrogating Kageyama. What else could he do to get the answers he craved?

"Atonement."

"Stop saying that!"

"Fine," he shrugged. Any trace of emotion, whether it be insanity or sadism, was gone. He was a mere shell of what Hinata remembered. "One nail for you. Two nails for me. Three nails for the both of us."

"I'm sorry?" Hinata inquired, not bothering to cover the obvious nausea building in his stomach. Kageyama held up his hand. Three of his slender fingers were wrapped in thin, blood soaked bandages. The sudden horrific realisation hit Hinata like a brick wall. There was only one thing he could do with those things.

"One for you, two for me, three for us. It's simple. Got it?"

"Please, Kageyama. Don't do this," Hinata begged, gazing up at Kageyama's naturally scathing eyes. He detected no signs of feeling, and saw nothing but emptiness. He'd been stripped of emotion long before Hinata had awoken.

"They've done it to me. Now they're making me do it to you, because they know how much I love you," he stated, taking a step forward and forcefully seizing Hinata's hand. "As a little bit more added torture for me, I suppose."

"Who're 'they'?"

The question was left unanswered.

Kageyama wrapped a thin, leather strap around Hinata's finger, holding him in place. Hinata's shoulders trembled as he looked up at his once dear friend. What could possibly have happened to this poor man to make him become so spiritless and dead? He was quickly fluctuating between multiple personalities, some seeming dead and some seeming psychotic, and whatever had happened to him was inevitably about to happen to Hinata. Despite the overwhelming fear of permanent mutilation, there was a sense of calmness within him, like Kageyama didn't have it in him to legitimately hurt him. How wrong he was!

The pliers didn't look up to date; if anything, they looked neglected and deliberately abused. Dirty, metallic handles, steel tongs, a bolt that creaked every time it moved. They looked like they hadn't been touched for hundreds of years. Kageyama shoved one of the two tongs underneath Hinata's nail. His free hand clenched into a fist. He took a deep, melancholic breath as he yanked his arm back.

An ear-splitting scream echoed throughout the room, followed shortly by endless, desperate sobs. Fresh, crimson blood splattered across Kageyama's arm. A solitary fingernail clattered across the room and onto the creaky, presumably wooden floor. Hinata blinked through his tears and stared down at his shaking hand: the nail on his index finger was completely gone, and thick, metallic blood was seeping through the bare, throbbing wound. A mass of pink flesh from under his nail was seeing the surface for the first time in its life, sending freezing cold, sharp pains through his arm.

"K-Kageyama... Please, s-stop this! Find some sanity!"

He could barely bring himself to lift his head. His cheeks were stained with salty tears that eventually dripped down onto his jeans. The searing pain from his fingertip flooded up his arm at a rapid speed.

"Two more, Hinata. Just two more," Kageyama whispered. One second's worth of screams was enough to bring him to his senses. His attempts at calming Hinata were in vain, but that did not stop him. He reached out and lay a gentle hand on Hinata's cheek, wiping away his tears with his thumb. Hinata flinched away.

"I can't, Kageyama, I can't do it," he pleaded, staring daggers into Kageyama's soulless eyes. "Just let me go..."

"I can't do that, Hinata. They'll kill me if I don't finish this. After it's done, I'll let you out and we'll leave together," he muttered, releasing Hinata's finger from the thick strap. In an attempt to escape being tied down again, Hinata writhed to and fro, shaking violently within his bindings. His hand was forced down and his middle finger secured into the strap.

Once again, the tongs of the pliers were thrusted beneath his nail. The build up was perhaps the worst part: the living purgatory of not knowing when it would happen. Kageyama tightly squeezed the grips of the device. Hinata endlessly begged to be freed, flailing and sobbing for his freedom. His wrists wept with oozing, thick blood. A metallic scent had filled the isolated room. Kageyama took a second deep breath, before yanking his arm back.

Another horrific howl of pain pulsated from Hinata's throat. He threw his head back, clenching his as-of-yet unharmed fist and tugging at the belts around his weeping wrists. The burning, agonising affliction in his fingers throbbed excruciatingly as his heart pumped more blood out of his deformity. Tears rolled down his cheeks like crystalline marbles.

"K-Kage... Ya..." He spluttered, forcing the syllables from his lips. His eyelids twitched frantically in his desperate attempt to stay conscious. "I can't..."

"It's not off," Kageyama muttered to himself. His pliers snapped closed by his side in anger. Hinata's eyes shot open. He forced his head up to see his nail, torn and snipped up as it was, hanging on by mere threads. Pure shock flooded his mind, momentarily numbing his ability to think.

"I'm sorry, Hinata..." Kageyama's voice was a mere whisper. The guilt weighing down on his shoulders was too much, but there was nothing he could do. If the nail had to be done again, then it would be done again.

In one swift movement, it was gone. The deafeningly quiet click of the pincers, the brisk swing of his arm away from Hinata's hand, the force of tearing a nail from its natural resting place; all in less than a second. Hinata's screams were dying down, each less powerful than the last. He was tiring himself out faster than initially expected.

The flow of blood from the first nail was already beginning to slow, too. The aching throb of the open wound was gradually numbing into a stinging burn. His finger was beginning to numb. The bare flesh left behind was gradually drying up and sealing, leaving a dark, wine coloured crust that looked almost like a shattered garnet.

"Kageyama, I don't know why you're doing this, but can't you just say no?! Isn't there any way of refusing to do this?" He bawled, shaking his head back and forth vigorously. Kageyama sighed deeply, tracing circles on the open palm of Hinata's twitching hand. He leaned closer to Hinata, so close that they were almost touching. Hinata could feel the gentle flow of his breath on his back of his ear.

"I wish there was."

And with that, the last nail was done. The final clamp of the pliers on his nail, the wrenching sensation of a nail sliding out of its socket, the feeling of blood seeping from an open wound, the inevitable scream that followed; all over in an instant. Hinata's head dropped onto Kageyama's tense shoulders, sobbing into his plain black shirt. Kageyama delicately unbound Hinata's bleeding wrists, allowing him to throw his arms around Kageyama and drown him in tears.

"K-Kageyama-"

"Don't. Don't speak. I don't want to hear it," he snapped, gently kissing Hinata's forehead. The mere sight of the deep lacerations made him want to vomit, to cry, to feel something other than emptiness. His fingertips were smeared with blood. The simple fact of the situation, the one and only piece of relevant information, was that Hinata's suffering was caused by his own hand. He shut his eyes and shook his head.

"Kageyama, don't cry," Hinata sniffled, gathering just enough strength to wrap his arms around Kageyama's waist in a warm embrace. "I don't know who made you do this—or why, for that matter— but I want you to know that it's not your fault. You did what you had to do."

"That's not an excuse. I hurt you. You'll never recover because your nails will never grow back like they did before," Kageyama retaliated, quickly standing up to avoid contact with Hinata. It felt wrong; after doing such a horrible thing to him, he had no right to lay a finger on him.

"Kageyama, I don't care. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Because," Hinata whispered, smiling absentmindedly. Entwining his fingers with Kageyama's, he locked eyes with him and stared deep into his soul. "I still love you, Kageyama."

A formidable wave of shock washed over the obsidian-haired boy. He'd committed such a horrible act of torture against Hinata, and yet he was still willing to stand by him. He was forced into maiming Hinata, yet there was a tiny fraction of his heart that was thankful for it. Maybe someone could understand the pain he went through; maybe someone could help him cope with the aftermath of his ordeal. Hinata hadn't experienced half of what he did, so it's not like he should have felt sorry for him. It was in his nature to empathise, but the part of him that wanted Hinata to feel pain so he could understand was dragging him down. A man like him didn't deserve a man like Hinata.

An elongated sigh escaped his lungs. With a broken smile scribbled on his face, he looked up at Hinata through desolate eyes and placed a soft, tender hand on his shoulder.

"Hinata Shoyo, you don't have a single sin to atone for."


End file.
